Watching television for many people is in every day pastime and often a form of nightly entertainment. Oftentimes, individuals watching television programs will experience undesired glare from lighting in the room. They may turn off all room lighting to eliminate this glare, or alternatively just prefer to watch television in a dark room. However, viewing television on regular settings in an unlit room is actually too bright for a person's eyes. Individual's eyes tend to adjust to the dark room around the television and not the television itself, therefore making the television screen excessively bright and even painful to watch. Movie theaters, for the same reason do not even completely dim the house lights. When the lights dim after previews, the house lights will still stay on reasonably bright in order to reduce the contrast between the lit screen and the surrounding room.
As a result, television backlighting has become increasingly popular. Some of the benefits of backlighting include the minimization of annoying glare on the screen, maintaining sufficient visibility in the room to navigate around furniture, and improved sharpness of the picture because one's eyes can focus more easily. Such backlighting can range from simply placing a lit incandescent light behind the television to various methods allowing for dynamic control of the backlighting. RGB LEDs (red-green-blue light emitting diodes) have been used in various ways to backlight a television. As a static color, RGB LEDs have been used to improve the ambience of a television. Dynamically adjusted lights have also been used to allow the LEDs to respond to the image on the television as a backlighting method to enhance the viewing experience of televisions.
In these more sophisticated methodologies, the video stream broadcasted to the television is analyzed and a computer (or similar processing circuitry) is used to calculate the values that are written to the LEDs. Some televisions have backlighting systems installed within the product during manufacture while other techniques have used a computer system (such as a personal computer) to calculate and broadcast these values. In these cases, the technique utilized output devices of computers or a second processing unit to affect the backlighting experience.
The most common means of transmitting a signal to a current technology digital television set is via the use of High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI). HDMI is a proprietary audio/video interface for transferring uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device to a compatible computer monitor, video projector, digital television, or digital audio device. HDMI is a digital replacement for analog video standards and can now be found on virtually all flat-panel video displays, cable television set-top boxes, and Blu-ray players. The HDMI cabling interconnecting video sources to displays is standardized.
However, existing methodologies for analyzing a video signal do so by analyzing the video signal and then passing the video signal to the television. Therefore, an apparatus and method for analyzing the video signal and controlling backlighting in response thereto without interrupting the HDMI video signal to the television is needed.